Mortal Business
by the ersatz diplomat
Summary: In which the Winchester Brothers are shipwrecked. Sort of. And then kidnapped. Kind of. Set a bit after Clap Your Hands if You Believe and Skin Game. Feat. No Soul Sam and Cas Ex Machina.
1. Chapter 1

_**Author's**_ **Note: **

The Winchesters are shipwrecked. Sort of. And then kidnapped. Kind of. Set a bit after _Clap Your Hands if You Believe _and _Skin Game. _Featuring No Soul Sam and Cas Ex Machina. Part 1 of 4.

* * *

_**This is no mortal business, nor no sound  
That the earth owes. I hear it now above me**_

_**The Tempest (1.2.2)**_

Trying to find a location on open water is a hell of a lot different than following a road or finding a street address. Things are measured in minutes and degrees and knots and there's just way too much math and potential for motion sickness involved.

Lake though it is, Michigan's vast coastline and untold depths definitely count as an inland sea, and Dean Winchester wonders if any Nessie-esque monsters lurk beneath the surface, like he'd heard for years.

'Cause that'd be cool, you know. Until it ate him.

The water was rough with wind and thunder rumbled petulantly overhead, a slow-building summer storm. Though it hadn't started to rain, it was getting dark fast, and the motor of the rented speedboat was starting to sputter; a rasping choke like it was about to lose its prime.

That, at least, was something he could fix.

Maybe.

"Crap." Dean smacked one hand against the weather-cracked housing of the engine. "Aw, c'mon, sweetheart, just a little further. Sammy, head for that beach."

His brother nodded and steered for the shoreline of the island. It was a creepy-looking island. Scooby Doo levels of creepy – gnarled tree branches and tall, dried grass bent in the driving wind, bleached-bone pale in the lightning. The scenery seemed to repeat over and over, like a cheap animation loop.

They were hunting a band of kappas; water-dwelling monsters who nest in rocky caves along riverbeds and island shores and drag swimmers to their deaths and eat their intestines, or so the tales in Bobby's books had read. Vividly.

Good times.

Dean killed the motor in the shallows and let the boat's momentum carry them toward the beach. He and Sam jumped out when the boat began to scrape the bottom and dragged it onto the narrow patch of sand and gravel.

He heard…something. A few bars of music on the wind, or maybe his ears were playing tricks on him after so long on the water.

Cruel lightning lit the map they held against a large rock, negating the LED glow of Sam's flashlight. For a second, the entire shoreline looked as bright as noon, washed free of any color, of any contrast but creeping shadow.

This island, he thought, looked to be a lot bigger than the one on the map and seemed to be a lot further from shore.

"I don't think we have the right place."

"Let's take a look around anyway," Sam said, not at all troubled by the creepy freaking trees or the ruins of the creepy freaking ghost town they had passed as they rounded the western shoreline. "Hey. What's _that?"_

He pointed at the highest part of the island. A monolithic black form rose from a hilltop, though he couldn't tell what it was from so far away. Dean shrugged.

Sam started walking, swinging a duffel bag onto his shoulder. "Let's go check it out."

"Hell. At least we're off the damn Minnow," Dean muttered to himself, hefting a bag of gear onto his own shoulder, and then louder, "I swear, if I hear you singing _I'm On a Boat, Motherfucker_ one more time—"

"He does not like it, Sam I Am, he does not like to leave the land." The beam of his brother's flashlight washed over the shoreline before settling on his face. "Not on a boat and not on a plane. Trains in the rain?"

"Bite me."

They trudged, following the flashlight's wandering beam, to the top of the island's biggest hill. The trees cleared and the terrain leveled into a rocky plateau. Between the wind in the grass and the grumble of approaching thunder, he would have sworn he heard an acoustic guitar.

Dean stopped and turned in a slow circle. Sam stared at him.

The sound was quiet, but _unmistakably_ David Bowie…_Golden Years,_ and the ability to identify classic rock by a faint guitar melody was what several million miles of the same dozen cassette tapes on constant repeat gets you.

He would have put every dollar he had left on it.

Dean turned to his brother. "Do you hear music? Like…Bowie?"

"No?" Sam stared at him, eyebrows climbing.

He either didn't hear it, or _couldn't_, which was less than reassuring. "Are you sure—"

"I don't hear anything." Sam took a few steps. He stopped, turned again, and said in what was probably supposed to be an encouraging tone, "Sure it isn't banjos?"

Dean flipped him off. The gangly bitch had been making _Deliverance_ jokes ever since he'd been abducted by faeries. Not cool.

They hiked.

The huge shadow was an old stone lighthouse, or what might have been one the better part of a century ago. There wasn't much left of it, the top and one side of the cylinder had collapsed and the wind rushed against the inside, hollow as a skull. A little cabin had been built in its shadow, made of the same stone, its windows glassless and black.

Sam started toward the inside of the broken lighthouse. Dean caught up with him and grabbed his brother's elbow for no reason other than the place creeped him the hell out and if it creeped Dean Winchester out, well...

"Don't."

"Why not?"

"I thought I saw something...over there."He gestured in the opposite direction with his shotgun.

Sam shrugged futilely and followed.

He might have seen a glimmer of red light from the window of the old stone cottage. Maybe. Maybe not. Then again, they were hunting Ninja Turtles, he was hearing ghostly Bowie and his little brother was missing a soul, so...

The song shifted, a melody he recognized after a moment. Dean looked around for the source of the sound again. "Are you sure you don't hear…"

"Hear _what?"_

"Sounds like...Journey? _Wheel in the Sky."_

His brother snorted dismissively and smacked the failing flashlight against the heel of his hand a few times, swearing softly. He turned back toward the ruined lighthouse and Dean followed, seizing his arm just before he stepped into the shadowy circle of stone.

The music in Dean's head stopped as if someone had flipped a switch.

He felt a chill, abrupt and imposing, almost alive, like the way the temperature drops during a midsummer thunderstorm; that eerie downdraft of upper atmosphere when the sky turns green and goes deathly silent.

Dean turned and almost ran into somebody, a wall of a man swathed in a cloak the color of dusk. He yelped and took a few scrambling steps backward – the figure he had almost walked into was _taller than Sam; _so ridiculously tall that the glow from the smoky lantern in his hand just kind of…swayed around his legs. The light was amber and amorphous, the lantern spat glittering embers at their feet like a hail of tiny meteors.

The breeze snapped the ragged hem of the stranger's heavy gray cloak out in front of him like a sail and he leaned on a staff as tall as Dean, close enough to smell like ozone and burning metal.

The stranger raised the lantern to get a look at them. It did nothing to better light the inside of its hood.

_The Hermit,_ some dusty, unused corner of Dean's memory recited, _guidance, enlightenment, the album art from Led Zeppelin IV._

"Uh. Sammy?" Dean asked, reaching out to clumsily punch his brother in the arm - he nodded toward the cloaked figure.

Sam turned and stared. The flashlight slipped numbly from his hand and clattered on the stony ground, flickering in death throes.

"Its, uh. Strider," his brother supplied after a second, nervously hitching the strap of his gear bag a little higher on his shoulder. Their arms bumped as they shuffled backward together. "You know. _Ranger of the North._"

"Dude," Dean cleared his throat and held his shotgun a little lower. "That is _obviously_ Old Ben Kenobi."

"_Flattered_." The figure's laugh was a dark rumble, lost in the murmur of the storm. Something like a grin glimmered, toothy, in the shadowy hood of the stranger's cloak. "But wrong on both counts."

"Who are you?" Dean demanded. "What are you doing out here?"

"I'm the Warden," he said, in a tone that denoted both title and explanation. "What are _you_ doing out here?"

"The game warden?" asked Sam.

Dean shivered. There was something…_off_, about this island, he knew it now for sure. Sam's off-hand strayed toward the pistol tucked into the back of his belt. The Warden – whatever that meant – had seen it, too.

He laughed again."Not exactly."

Lightning flickered overhead, creeping in soundless, blinding vectors; Sam's fingers inched closer to his gun as the length of seconds seemed to grow. They stared at each other. A drop of lukewarm rain hit Dean's cheek and slid down like a tear, the silent forks of lightning seemed to stretch, never-ending, across the sky like the glyphs of some long-dead language.

The man's smile died as he dropped the lantern. Flames jumped, were smothered with the sound of crushed metal and glass, and in the abrupt darkness the man checked Sam with a huge, arcing swing of the staff.

Dean didn't see it happen so much as he _heard_ it – a home-run crack almost as loud as the shot from the gun Sam had drawn and fired, the muzzle flash blinding in the stormy dusk.

"Sam!"

The shot went wide. Electric blue sigils flared to life on the stone where the round hit the cabin, spreading out like ripples on water, layers and layers of them.

It was warding, ancient warding, and it cast a strange, strangely beautiful light across the hilltop. Dean had seen some of the sigils before – warding against angels, against demons and gods, but he had never seen outside the Veil, and he had never seen them _move. _The symbols shifted and slid, each melted away into the dark, one immediately replaced by another.

He'd heard the high-pitched whine of a ricochet but couldn't seem to look away from the warding on the stone. It glowed and burned white behind his eyes, _permanent_.

While Dean reeled, the man batted the shotgun from his grip with the staff, restraint in his motion like he was trying to subdue a kid instead of an adult with a gun. His hands sprang open at the rap across his knuckles, _ow_ – Dean stumbled backward out of range of the next strike, his heel caught on a stone and he landed on his ass in dirt and gravel, breath knocked from his lungs.

Sam was still trying to stand in the odd light. He swung drunkenly and the man sidestepped his fist with a quicker, cleaner motion than someone that large should have been able to manage, closing the space between them to put Sam on the ground with a Judo hip throw.

The strange blue light of the warding was beginning to dim.

He scooped up a loose handful of sandy dirt and tossed it over the brothers, then raised his empty hand in a gesture terribly reminiscent of _'these aren't the droids you're looking for.' _The breeze shifted directions - wintery wind swept across the hilltop, following the man's hand; a whisper through the brush, a shudder, a tremble in the leaves of the stunted trees.

"_Dorme, dormius."_

Unshakable drowsiness slipped over Dean like rising water. The thought occurred to him as he fought the sensation – maybe he should try to stand, or reach for his shotgun, try to get them out of here.

The man leaned over them, seemingly upside-down, a flash of silver in the shape of a…was it a devil's trap, at his neck?

_The Hermit, Reversed,_ the memory recited, faraway and amused_; isolation, exile. _His limbs were too heavy to move, his eyelids were like doors to a vault, his mind began to shut down, borderline-hypothermic.

"_In a boat, with a goat,"_ Sam muttered, dazed. "_He would not, could not_—"

Dean reached for the tattered hem of the Warden's cloak, laughing deliriously.

"Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi, you're my only hope—"

The Warden raised his hand again and the rain began to hiss and slow around them, dying away in – Dean would have sworn it was a swirl of snowflakes.

* * *

Stay tuned for Part 2...


	2. Chapter 2

Author's note: for some reason when I picture Lacuna and Toot, it's always April and Andy from_ Parks and Rec. _

* * *

**_"Let's look on the bright side: we're having an adventure, Fezzik, and most people live and die without being as lucky as we are."_**

**_\- The Princess Bride, William Goldman_**

Drowsy amber light fell from hurricane lamps hanging in the naked rafters, casting dancing shadows on the walls. Wind howled in the eaves, whistled through gaps in the mortar. Dean blinked a few times. He and Sam were sitting back-to-back in a chalk circle drawn on a stone floor, simple, without any runes or sigils. Their hands were bound behind them.

_Dammit_.

He worked his wrists against the restraints – steel cuffs. This wasn't his first rodeo, though. He could pick handcuffs if he had something to do it with; a scavenged paperclip, a nail pried out of the woodwork. The walls, like the floor, were stone – if he was going to guess, he'd say they were in the cabin next to the lighthouse. It wasn't a big place, maybe twelve by twelve. He and Sam were crammed into their own little corner.

Dean craned his neck around. There was a hammock in the opposite corner, hanging from the rafters – new construction on the old stone shack. A beautiful acoustic guitar rested in the hammock, a footlocker beneath it. An overflowing combination bookcase/makeshift workbench/pantry made of boards and cinder blocks took up one entire wall. An old metal ice chest sat on the floor nearby, dented, green - nearly a twin to the one in Dean's car, parked at a dock on the shore. A card table and a pair of folding chairs took up another corner beneath the single window, and leaning against the wall next to it was a nice leather guitar case.

There was one weapon; an old lever-action rifle on the crooked driftwood mantel over the cold and empty hearth. An ammo belt hung from a hook near it, both clean though well-worn. The gray cloak hung next to both.

Their abductor, the ridiculously tall guy with the stick, had his back to them. He was going through their stuff at the workbench. He held one of their fake IDs up to the lamplight, laughed, then pulled out a half-empty flask from Dean's gear. He opened it and took a whiff, winced.

_"Hell's bells."_

A surge of not-entirely conscious indignation drove Dean to his feet. He almost made it. His boot brushed the chalk line of the circle and it zapped him like a taser on crack. His ass hit the floor, his voice climbed several octaves. "_Sonofabitch_!"

Something dropped from the rafters and landed just outside the circle – a basketball-sized mote of scarlet light that dimmed around a miniature silhouette. It was a _she_, and she couldn't have been a foot tall. She had wings – sheer, silvery insect wings draped around her shoulders like a cape, and her black armor was studded with fishhooks. And she was _gorgeous._ Her wispy black hair was tied into a ponytail over one shoulder and wide, solemn dark eyes peered up at him as she said, in a sepulchral voice something that tiny shouldn't have been able to produce:

"The mortals are waking, my lord."

"Son of a _bitch,"_ Dean repeated. This one was big, and could talk. "Again with the frigging faeries?"

The Warden, whatever the hell _that_ meant, turned away from the table and dropped to his heels to stare at his prisoners. He had ditched the Obi-Wan getup and in the light of the cabin Dean could see him clearly.

It was just…a _guy_, a little older than himself, dark-eyed and dark-haired and unshaven. He had a scar bisecting one eye, a nose that had been broken at least once. The flash of silver at his neck was a pentacle, with a red gem set in the center. The man looked vaguely familiar, and he was about to speak when Sam interrupted, dazed.

"Dean, it's a faerie. Oh my god, it has a _sword_."

"We _all_ have swords," piped a tiny voice.

The Warden raised a Spock-like eyebrow. "What do you mean, _'again' _with the frigging faeries?'"

The Tiniest Goth stared unblinking up at him, and Dean would have never admitted it aloud, but his skin kind of…crawled. "They _Close-Encountered_ me."

"Oh." The Warden grimaced. "_Dude_. That sucks."

"No kidding," Dean ground out from between clenched teeth.

"So, _here's_ the thing." The tall man clapped his hands eagerly. "I need to know if someone sent you two here to kill me or not. How you answer will dictate whether you leave here. Or...not."

Behind Dean, Sam mumbled something unintelligible, swayed and was subsequently zapped by the chalk circle, which zapped Dean.

Everything smelled like burning hair for a second.

"He'll be fine, it's a residual effect of the sleeping spell. Should wear off pretty quick," the man shrugged as if everything he had just said was supposed to make perfect sense. "Now, you said some faeries, _what_, abducted you or something?"

When the man moved, Dean could see the almost cartoonishly-large caliber revolver holstered in a shoulder rig beneath his long leather coat. Thank god the guy had just decided to beat them with a stick, that was embarrassing enough.

Dean sighed. They should have been halfway back to Wisconsin by now. "Yep. Couple weeks ago."

"Where at?"

"Indiana."

"When the faeries kidnapped you," the man said in the plain, clear voice of someone speaking to a child, "they didn't give you any gifts and you didn't eat any of their food, did you?"

"No," Dean snapped, glaring. "I was kinda busy, y'know, being violated by the inhabitants of _Fern Gully._"

"Heh. _Fern Gully,_ good one. You didn't make any deals? Bargains?"

"No?"

"A mind-numbingly gorgeous full-size blonde didn't take you to a big stone table and, uh—" the Warden gestured suggestively.

"I think I would have remembered _that_."

"Yeah. Hard to forget." His expression grew distant, unpleasant. "Nothing else you remember, anything specific at all?"

"Only a dozen glowy Tinkerbells trying to make me their bitch."

The little black-armored faerie laughed darkly. Another one - oh for the love of absentee _God_ – landed next to her, grinning. It was a tiny dude, maybe eighteen inches tall. He was wearing armor crafted from blue and silver energy drink cans and he had a lightning bolt painted on his face. His dandelion fluff hair was an eye-watering shade of violet.

Behind the faeries, the Warden tossed a few logs into the fireplace and waved a hand. Flames licked at the wood, conjured without a spark or kindling.

"Sam," Dean hissed over his shoulder. "Dude's a _witch_."

This got the attention of the purple-haired faerie, who lifted off and buzzed toward the brothers like a low-flying helicopter, squeaking furiously. "Mind your tongue in the presence of the Pizza Lord, knave, or I shall remove it from thee!"

"Witch?" asked Sam, still a little dazed, "Where? Ugh, where _are_ we?"

"_Wizard_," their captor corrected dismissively as he plucked the angry faerie from the air and dropped him on top of the open, empty guitar case. "Y'know. Quick to anger, etcetera?"

"Wizards aren't _real_," Dean heard himself say, though even he could hear a note of doubt creeping into his voice.

"Like unicorns," Sam agreed, blearily.

"Wizards _are_ real. Did you tell the poor kid unicorns aren't real?" He stared disapprovingly down at Dean, then turned to Sam. "Santa's real, too, pal. We're hunting buddies."

Dean closed his eyes and wished fervently that he would suddenly wake up in bed at the motel. There was a hot tub, and pay-per-view, and a cute, lonely-looking night auditor, but maybe that was hoping for too much.

"If you were a _real_ wizard, you'd have a robe and a pointy hat with stars on it," said Sam, which was the most coherent thing he had strung together since regaining consciousness, even if it wasn't exactly Pulitzer-worthy. Dean couldn't tell if his brother was being sarcastic. Everything Sam said lately had the same bitchy tone - now it was bitchy _and_ slightly concussed. "And a gray beard."

"I'm not that old, jackass," the Warden snapped. "And I don't do hats. Or beards."

"Gandalf the Going-Gray?" Sam ventured. He was starting to sound more pissed-off than confused, which was only fun if you weren't on the receiving end. "He didn't, uh, pass through fire and death to bandy crooked words with a bunch of…idjits?"

Dean had to laugh, just a little.

The Warden stared skyward for a moment, his expression long-suffering. He sighed.

Then he slashed at the air with one hand, muttering in Latin.

Darkness engulfed the room: absolute, abrupt and arctic _cold_. The flames in the lanterns and candles dimmed to pinpricks of blue and the air grew colder than any walk-in freezer – the steel of the handcuffs started to stick painfully to his wrists, the stone walls were rimed in frost and Dean could see his breath in clouds in the air. He began to shiver violently and noticed, for the first time, at least half the lanterns in the rafters weren't _lanterns_, but little glowing faerie creatures perched on the beams, just watching.

The wizard closed his heavily-scarred left hand and when he opened it again, a tiny…_sun,_ the size of a softball floated an inch above his palm. It wasn't a seeming, or a glamour, some sort of trick.

It was a tiny fucking _sun_, made of actual burning fucking _plasma_. It had sunspots and flares, it spun on an axis hovering over his hand, and looked exactly like every false-color NASA image ever. The heat of it seared against Dean's face like when the apparently very-real wizard hunkered down on his heels next to the chalk line encircling them.

"You guys done?"

Dean could smell his own hair singing but his teeth were still chattering violently. Sam was staring over his shoulder, wordless, light reflected in his wide eyes.

The wizard closed his hand and the tiny ball of fiery plasma extinguished. Light and heat returned to the one-room cabin. Candles and lamps flickered, returning to their previous glow, and the roar of the logs in the fireplace jumped back to life as if it had been a paused video.

He dusted his hands and stood.

"What in _the_ _shit_ are you demonhunting chuckleheads doing on my island?" He turned toward the table, picked up Sam's pistol from the gear bag and ejected the magazine, examining an unfired round carefully. "Loaded for bear. Sanctified iron, huh? I bet this is what pissed off the wards."

"We were tracking a band of kappas—"

"Kappas hardly ever venture this far out into open water. And I didn't ask _why_." He threw the stuff back into the bag. "I want to know _how_."

"Well," Sam said reasonably, "just sit right back and you'll hear a tale, a tale of a fateful—"

"_No_." The Warden whirled back toward them with a threatening billow of coat, pointing a finger at Sam. "No _Gilligan_, Sad Keanu!"

"Dude," Dean aimed for diplomacy: with Sam's natural empathetic response compromised, somebody had to take up the slack. "We just followed the map."

"Well, that would make sense," The wizard's eyes were as dark and as cold as the fire in his hand had burned bright. He turned toward Dean and the warmth began to leech from the room again, slower. Crueler. This time it felt as if it were starting in his very bones, so cold they would snap and shatter like glass. "_If this island was on any maps."_

It hurt. Like hell, literally.

"I told you! I told you, Sammy," he gasped, jaw locked in pain. "This the wrong place, and now it's death by Harry friggin' Potter—"

The Warden shook his head a few times and blinked. The cold seemed to abate, though Dean was pretty sure he had frostbite from the stone floor.

"Mkay. Let me clear a few things up for you guys. I'm a _wizard_. Not a witch; kitchen, hedge or otherwise. A seidr. A _mage_." He held out both hands as he paced across the tiny room. "Odds are what you're used to dealing with are a bunch of bush-league, demon-dealing psychopaths who either _bought_ power, or sold it to the highest bidder." He took a breath. "Whereas I come by mine naturally."

"Except for that part from Queen Mab!" the purple-haired faerie piped from his seat on top of the guitar case. The wizard's expression didn't change. He bumped the bottom of the case with one foot. The faerie fell in with a high-pitched yelp as it jostled shut.

"Except for that part from Mab." He rolled his eyes. "But she's not a demon, she's just...eh, chaotic neutral."

"Wait a second," sputtered Sam. "You don't mean _the_ Queen Ma—"

"No!" The wizard pointed another threatening finger at Sam. Then he sighed and ran a hand through his hair. "Well... yeah, but for the love of all that's holy, don't say her name again, unless you want to meet somebody who'll make _The Fourth Kind_ seem like a day at the spa."

"Yikes," Dean shuddered.

"_'Yik_es' isn't the half of it, buddy. I thought you guys were hunters. Don't you know how summonings work? Like,_ 'Third time's the charm?'"_

Both brothers stared at him in stunned silence.

The Warden dragged both hands slowly down his face. "Oh, boy."

"She's Queen of the Unseelie faeries, right?" Sam asked, craning his neck around. "The Winter Folk?"

"Yeah," said the wizard, frowning suspiciously.

"I thought you _'don't believe in faeries,_'" Dean sniped.

Sam sounded absolutely dejected. "Dude, we got our asses handed to us by a leprechaun. I looked into it."

The wizard snorted. Dean glared, and the man held up a placating hand. "I feel you. The Wee Folk can be real dicks."

Tinker-Goth glowed and sputtered like an angry pilot light.

"Not you, sweetheart. Obviously."

How friendly do you have to be with a Faerie Queen to get it to show up on the third mention of its name, no ritual or rite involved? From the look of cold ire on the man's face, maybe not _friendly_. Maybe not on good terms at all.

There was a muffled buzzing sound from inside the guitar case, a squeaky voice. "I seem to be stuck!"

The wizard winced and flipped the case open. "Sorry, bud."

He regarded them seriously for a moment as he got a beer from the cooler. He poured some into a shot glass for Ziggy Stardust faerie, who zoomed up to sit on the edge of the bookcase and drank from it like it was a bucket.

Then he said to his minions, but mostly to himself;

"So. Summer didn't send these guys. Despite all outward appearances, Asgard _definitely_ didn't. The Erlking would straight-up kill me with his own two hands. Maybe some of the White Court's catspaws, but they would never send someone so incompetent—"

"Hey! We are not incompetent—and nobody _sent_ us!"

The wizard toasted them with his beer. "'Not incompetent' says the guy in the handcuffs."

"We're wasting time, Sir Knight." The little female faerie buzzed over to land on the wizard's shoulder and sat there. "Nissa told Fifinella and Fifinella told me that the short one cooked one of the Wyldfae in a magic metal box."

"Metal box?"

"Microwave," Dean grumbled, putting his chin on his knees.

The Warden stared at him and crossed his arms. "Before or after…?"

"After the," he almost couldn't make himself say it, "the _incident_."

The wizard regarded him with an expression that was somehow both fairly impressed and scowling fatherly disapproval. "What did they _do_ to you?"

"That leprechaun in Indiana," Sam explained, as if there were a bad taste in his mouth, "was passing off taking firstborns as alien abductions."

"And he's the older brother, huh. The _X-Files_ route, that's… unusually creative." The Warden made a face as he drank. "And you guys were both investigating this weirdness, and that's when they…?"

"Yeah," Dean grumbled.

"Ouch," agreed the Warden. "And the leprechaun?"

"Managed to banish it with a Celtic spell," Sam said, seriously. "After I trapped it while it was counting rock salt."

"Nice."

The goth faerie fluttered impatiently. "The pretty one is missing pieces, my lord."

The smile faded from around the wizard's eyes. "Which one do you think is pretty, Lacuna?"

She said nothing and shook out her hair with a puff of red sparks.

Cold dread filled the pit of his stomach. Dean cleared his throat. "Dude, I think this is just a…really, really big misunderstanding."

The Warden sipped his beer thoughtfully, silent for a long, terrible moment. "...I think I might know what happened."

"What?"

"Ley lines."

"Okay, now _that_ is a load of weapons-grade bullshit," Sam snapped. "Ley lines are negated by deep water."

The wizard nodded as the little faerie on his shoulder leaned in and whispered. He listened patiently, and shook his head. "Lacuna. We've talked about this. Can't just kill everyone we meet."

She glared at the brothers and murmured something else.

He shook his head again. "Even if we do have _lots_ of places to hide the bodies."

"So what's this about ley lines?" Dean asked politely.

"There is a fairly powerful confluence, near here, sometimes it affects navigation," the wizard said distractedly, as the little faerie leaned down to mutter in his ear again. "Huh. Good point."

"What's a good point?" Dean demanded. "What's a good point?"

"She says you may not _know it_ if you were sent here. Brainwashed sleeper-cells. Something might have put the psychic whammy on you."

"Nobody put the psychic whammy on anybody, least of all me!"

The wizard peered into his half empty beer bottle. "…How would you know if someone had?"

Sam shrugged as best he could with his hands cuffed behind his back. "I guess that…_is_ a good point?"

"Here's a thought. Did either and-or both of you get it on with woman in Chicago, recently?" the wizard asked. "Supernaturally good-looking, pale skin, black hair, blue eyes, big, uh... maybe went by the name of Lara, kind of not a nice lady? You guys seem like her type."

Sam stared up at him. "Huh?"

"You don't mean." Dean blinked a few times. "You just described Lara Romany, the porn star?"

The Warden picked at a loose thread on his coat sleeve. "Stage name, buddy."

"_Dude_."

"Dude," said the wizard, "_Duh_. What do you think, Lacuna? Psychic-whammy?"

"Mortal minds are weak, my lord."

"Major General Toot? How do you vote?"

"Whammied and impotent, Sire."

"_Incompetent_." The wizard frowned. "Well, that's two votes to my one."

"This is _outrageous_," Sam muttered.

"I was outvoted." The man shrugged. "I mean, you guys were actually lucky I was here tonight. If it were up to Lacuna and the Major, they probably would have fit you for concrete shoes and you'd be full fathom five, sleepin' with the fishes."

"Truth, fam," said the little Red Bull-armored faerie with as much solemnity as his squeaky voice could muster.

"Now," the Warden continued, cracking his knuckles, "it's not one-hundred percent accurate, but I _can_ check for evidence of mental manipulation."

"Does it hurt?" asked Sam.

"No. Technically, it is a non-invasive procedure." He waved a hand. "A little Star Trek-y, though?"

"I mean, why wouldn't it be?" Dean sighed.

"You first, Point Break," said the wizard, and dropped to a knee, peering intently at Sam's face. "Huh," he said after a moment, genuine fear touching his features so briefly it might have just been a shadow. "That's…weird."

"Nothing happened. Was something supposed to happen?"

"Yeah," he frowned and turned toward Dean. "Alright, Top Gun. Your turn."

"How does this work, exactl—" he started as he met the man's fathomless gaze, and felt something inside his head kind of…slip.

* * *

Part 3, coming soon to a screen near you.


	3. Chapter 3

_**Author's Note: **_I am really enjoying writing for fun again, thank you all for your encouragement.

* * *

_**But you and I have been through that, and this is not our fate, **_  
_**so let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late.  
**** \- 'All Along the Watchtower' Jimi Hendrix**_

Somehow he stood again in the shadow of the broken lighthouse, in the last remaining light as the storm broke overhead.

What looked like a helicopter rushed over, low, and for a moment Dean thought he could hear the faint, warped strains of that famous intro to Wagner's _Ride of the Valkyries_, or maybe it was Sabbath's _War Pigs. _Maybe it was both_. _Trees shook in the wash from the blades where the stony plateau gave way to the rest of the island.

At his feet, sickly yellow light shone from a huge pit. The edge seemed to creep nearer to him, crumbling away in slow motion.

The man in the gray cloak stood at the edge across from him and leaned on his staff, holding the lantern, just...waiting. Behind him in the flashes of the storm, the lighthouse was a lighthouse and sometimes it was a low, crude stone table and sometimes it was a jagged temple that rose into the darkness, disappearing into the roiling sky.

Dean scrambled to his feet. Fire flickered at the edges of his vision, the air was acrid and hazy. An explosion, maybe an earthquake shook the ground and he nearly lost his footing again as he scrambled out of reach of the _thing_ that grasped for him, some kind of creature he had no name for; nothing but teeth and eyes, smoke and shadow made flesh.

There were other people there, too, fighting them - a dark-haired and vaguely familiar-looking man dressed like Luke from _Return of the Jedi,_ wielding a sword made of white light. Purple electricity flew from the fingertips of a coldly beautiful young woman, jumping from one target to the next to the next as frost rimed the ground around her feet, spreading in dizzying fractals. Her hair was a wind-whipped, opalescent storm, her eyes the color of light through a glacier. A gaunt, handsome man in all black, with eyes the same gleaming chrome as the blood-stained Gurkha swords he bore charged across the rocky ground alongside prehistoric-sized wolves that lunged out of the night, tearing through the creatures with snapping jaws.

Lightning struck at the Warden's unflinching back, and in the searing afterimage, Dean could see another figure in the still-smoking crater; a slight woman in soot-stained white and dented steel plate, blonde hair spilling from beneath a winged, visored helmet like something from a Rackham illustration. With her, a dozen literal berzerkers fell into a phalanx, charging. Her chipped, rusted sword intercepted the creature that rushed the Warden, she drove it back with a blow from a cracked shield, screaming.

That, of all things, seemed to draw the attention of the Warden. He did nothing more than glance in her direction, and snap the end of the staff against the ground, which erupted into flame. It raced toward the creatures like a living thing, and for a moment a helix of blood and steel, a whorl of fire seemed to hang suspended in the air.

The stony ground around the pit cracked and shuddered again, and Dean shuffled backward for purchase, dodging the teeth of another shadowy fiend. In the hellish light of battle, Dean saw that it was not a lighthouse at all, or a temple, or a stone table, but the mountain of _things_ the man had killed, monsters and demons, creatures of all kinds in a towering, rotting heap.

A bodycount, confirmed kills in horrible high-definition.

Crouched on top of it all was another woman in white. Her robe was dirty; she had probably been beautiful once, but she was too thin, her face drawn, auburn hair tangled and streaming in the wind. In the flicker of the storm Dean could see the silhouette of her phantom wings stretched, black and tattered against the bruised sky. Two pair of eyes; one set human, one eerie green and lidless glowed beneath a sigil on her forehead in dull purple, the shape of an hourglass.

An angel. A fallen angel.

He tore his eyes away and gazed into the abyss at his feet, further down than he thought was even possible. They weren't dead, Dean could feel it, hear all of them, calling. Monsters that had no names, names too frightening to speak aloud or names that had been lost to time, eldritch beings and dark gods, and they weren't calling _him_.

The things trapped in the jaundiced crystal beneath them weren't the confluence of ley lines the Warden had spoken of but the origin – the energy of the collected monstrosities had pulled them here like a neon sign, right to a whole horde of the kind of things that would have loved to get their hands on a soulless vessel tailor-fit for Lucifer himself.

"Warden," Dean heard himself say, and the man looked up at him. "It's a _prison_."

There was a snap, like a rubber band against the inside of his skull, and he was in the little cabin again, scrambling _away _in a cold blooded panic_. _The flash outside the little cabin was too huge, too green to be lightning. It shone through every crack in the roof and missing patch of mortar in the stone, the roar that shook the little building sounded too much like the hollow rumble of wings, like the growl of an angry voice.

"Empty night," the man swore, his head tilting to one side like he was listening.

It sounded like _two_ voices, arguing, and Dean recognized one.

"Agh," the wizard said, annoyed. "_Angels_. Should have known. Which one of you called in an air strike? This is a no-fly zone, guys. DMZ. Your friend is _not_ landing here. I don't know...if he can't or won't, my Enochian is pretty rusty, and my translator is being belligerent."

The ground shook again.

"_Rusty?"_ Dean demanded in a hoarse voice.

"Don't go anywhere," the wizard said. The door to the cabin flew open, the staff in the corner leapt into his hand and the man stormed out into the night.

"Dude," Sam said, craning around to look at his brother, "What the _hell_?"

"Dude full-on Spocked me!"

"Well, he said it was Star Trek-y." Sam said, reasonably. "Were you expecting Uhura's fan dance?"

He dug an elbow into Sam's kidney. The circle zapped them both.

The door flew open again a heartbeat later and the Warden stormed in.

"Okay, here's the thing." The wizard drew a line through the chalk with his staff and hauled them each to their feet. "I'm gonna cut you loose since your celestial babysitter is here and I don't want to be smited…smote? Whatever. I want you to swear on your honor as a hunter that neither you nor anyone in your company is going to try to off me, now or ever, in perpetuity."

"Okay," said Dean, bewilderedly, because like hell was he going to try to off the guy without nuclear launch codes, or whatever the magical equivalent happened to be.

"No, Winchester," the wizard spoke his name and it felt like someone had rung a bell inside his bones. "You have to _swear_ it. You know what that means, swearing a binding magical oath?" He unlocked their handcuffs with a key fumbled from a coat pocket. "Any and all action taken against the oath will incur entropic retribution."

"Entropic…?"

"Bad luck?" Sam offered.

"Very bad."

"Okay. I swear it."

"And I swear that I will convey you and your party safely from this godforsaken hellhole—"

The ground rumbled...sullenly.

"Stars and stones!" The wizard yelled out the open door. "I swear on my power to convey you safely from this _island paradise_ as soon as humanly possible. Go get the gas can, Neo."

"Me?" asked Sam.

"Yeah, you. Out the front door, around the corner to the left. You," he pointed at Dean. "Get your stuff."

Sam backed out the door and the wizard turned to the gear scattered across the table. He field-stripped Sam's nine millimeter with the quick hands of an avid shooter and dumped the pieces in the bag, then turned to Dean, leaning down to look him directly in the eye.

"I'm holding you responsible for that kid's actions and you know why. Fair enough?"

"...Yeah. Okay," Dean agreed, still a little stunned. He shouldered their gear and started out the door after the wizard, and then stopped dead in his tracks. Sam was a few feet from him, staring up at a shadowy figure, better than ten feet tall and wrapped in a huge gray cloak, green eyes glowing in its hood, which tilted curiously to one side.

"_Holy shit_."

"Alfred's peaceful. Well, no. Benign, maybe? Your angel buddy woke him up, I think he thought we were gonna throw down."

"Why the _hell_ is there a freaking Ringwraith in your front yard?" Sam demanded, his voice thin. He clutched a gas can, one hand reflexively grasping for his gun.

"Because," said the Warden with a grin, turning around to walk backward towards the beach, never slowing or taking a misstep. "There is evil here that does not sleep. Go back to bed, Alfred! Everything's cool." The huge figure turned and shambled back into the darkness. "He's the island's _genus loci,"_ he explained, as if making excuses for a moody roommate. "And he's kinda... territorial."

Dean felt coldly nauseous, and followed the man toward the shoreline, ready to get the hell off of this literally godforsaken island. Sam sighed glumly and took a few long steps to catch up.

"Why do those faeries keep calling you a Knight?" Sam demanded, because even without a soul, he was unable to suppress the need to find shit out and ask questions that were obviously way too personal.

"I made a deal," the man said, as if through a mouthful of sand, "with a faerie queen, the one we talked about. I'm her mortal emissary."

"No." Sam stopped and stared at him. "You're her _huntsman_. Like in the fairy tales, all those stories, that's you."

"Yes," the man said, staring steadily back at Sam, his voice cold and absolute, devoid of emotion. "I suppose so."

"You know, in the stories, he always sells her out in the end."

The Warden snorted softly, like he was amused, then turned and walked straight toward the water's edge, hands and staff outstretched like some post-apocalyptic Heston-as-Moses about to part the sea. His voice rang across the water, a command.

"_Infriga!"_

As he stepped out into..._onto_ the water, there was a sound like a gunshot – like the screaming of metal on metal. The lake froze beneath his feet in a solid sheet for almost fifty yards, huge iceberg crystals the size of Buicks called from the beneath the waves. The weather had cleared to high streams of silver clouds, moonlight glowed on dark ice that reflected the glimmering band of Milky Way. When the terrible sound died away, he spoke again.

"Castiel!" The wizard said dramatically, then paused and tilted his head. "Did I say that right? Okay," he nodded as if to himself, gesturing to the empty ice before him with the wooden staff. "Come in peace, messenger of peace."

The chill Dean felt had nothing to do with the wind sweeping across the conjured ice as a dark-haired man in a rumpled trenchcoat appeared, summoned and bound of action _with_ _six words. _This wasn't some hedge witch dicking around with a Xeroxed book of shadows. His brain was hardwired for magic from birth, insulated to use it, overclocked by what was essentially a deity. The son of a bitch probably could have killed them with a stray thought.

The wizard and the angel stood on the ice, conversing as amiably as acquaintances that had run into each other at the grocery store.

"What do you think they're talking about?"

Sam's brow furrowed. "Guys-in-flasher-coats club meetings?"

A moment later, Castiel was gone, and the wizard walked back to shore. He struck the surface of the ice with the butt of his staff and it shattered into a channel of water just wide enough for their crappy boat. He helped them drag it to the edge.

"So you'll want to sail kind of southwest—"

"Y'know, I think we can take it from here, Prospero."

The wizard turned and stared at Sam, who, in his current state would never have seen it, but Dean did.

_Pain_. A nanoseconds' worth of it behind the eyes, a twitch of the muscles in his jaw. And then the man decked him - right in the face, a swift right hook out of nowhere. The Warden caught the front of his brother's jacket as he fell, hefted all two-hundred-odd pounds of Unconscious Sam up with one hand and set him down in the bottom of the shallow boat.

"What the fuck!" Dean demanded as the Warden turned toward him. "Dude, what the _fuck-_-"

"I'm sorry," the man placated, raising a palm. He picked up the discarded gas can and put it in the boat as well. "It'll be easier for you to leave if he's out. I think this place wants him here. You know it. I think you've known since you got here."

"I…_saw_ it," Dean choked out, cold to the core. "I saw all those things, I..."

"Then you know why you need to get your _Excellent Adventure_-ing asses the hell out of here, pronto," the man interrupted, sternly. "It's incredibly dangerous, him, here, like _that…_"

"I didn't bring him back that way," Dean tried to explain, his voice breaking. When he shut his eyes, he could still see all of it, permanent, in technicolor, he could still hear the taunting whispered calls of those creatures in the pit.

"I know."

"I don't know how to fix this."

"I _know_," said the Warden again, sadness and sympathy in the lines around his eyes. "I don't even know how the fuck he's walking around like that, or if there even is a fix. For something like that, you'd have to bring in the big guns. Summon a god, or something. If it's possible at all to restore a soul to a body, I don't know."

"Who, though?" Dean asked, desperate for an answer, any answer, any help at all. "What?"

"I can only tell you what to avoid, kid." The wizard leaned on his staff, suddenly weary. "Demons. Necromancers. The goddamn Sidhe, avoid them like the fucking plague. At least if you piss off a brand-name god, there's a passing chance they'll just liquefy you, quick and painless. Odin and Hades seem like okay, if terrifying, dudes."

Dean stared at him, the seed of an idea prickling at his subconscious. "The big guns."

"The biggest you can find. Come on."

Together, they shoved the boat out into the channel of icy water.

"Definitely head southwest. This thing doesn't look very reliable. You'll be in Chicago in an less than an hour, give or take. I've got a friend there who can get you a ride to wherever, just tell her I sent you."

The wizard produced an old, crumpled but official-looking business card from the pocket of his long leather coat, silver lettering gleamed in the moonlight. There was a cell number neatly inked below the name, the title and department had been crossed out with a single line:

_SGT. K. Murphy, CPD Special Investigation_

Dean read it once, twice, his memory conjuring a cute little blonde with a sword, vampires, an abandoned hotel, a wrecked Harley.

"She about so high," he held his hand level with his shoulder. "Blonde, kind of Bruce Lee-meets-Princess Leia, rides a sick black Street 750, carries plastic explosive around like candy?"

The Warden blinked at him, then began to laugh, harder and harder until he was wheezing as he leaned on his staff, knee-deep in the lake.

"I take it that's a _yes_," Dean muttered, pocketing the business card.

"Yeah." The Warden wiped at his eyes, still chuckling. "Yep. That's her."

"You _are_ Harry...something," Dean accused, wracking his memory of the case for details, but it had been a few years and beers since then. "Dresden, right? The PI from Chicago."

He grinned toothily. "That's what it says on my tombstone."

"Yeah, everybody said you were dead. Well, everyone except Sergeant Murphy."

"How do you know Karrin?" His tone was congenial, curious even, but the way Dresden took a towering step closer, dark eyes slightly narrowed even though he was still smiling, well, it kind of felt like a threat.

"We ended up on the same case, and killed some whaddya call'ems…_blampires?_, together a while back. Outside of South Bend. Some bad bitch named Marla. Martha?"

"Mavra," Harry the Wizard supplied in a murderous tone, wearing an expression to match. The air felt like it had dropped ten degrees. The thought of stepping out of reach crossed Dean's mind, but fleeing makes you look like prey to things higher than you on the food chain. His feet were too cold and numb to move, anyway, but the icy water didn't seem to bother Dresden in the slightest.

"Well," Dean rambled. "_She_ killed them while Sam and I tried to stay out of the line of fire. And then I kinda rebuilt her motorcycle. And there was a thing with some ghouls, too, no biggie. So, not dead, huh? I bet Sarge was pretty happy to see you."

"Sarge—oh, Karrin, yeah." Harry rubbed a hand across the back of his neck and shrugged sheepishly. "When she was done being mad."

"Understandable. God, and even with the fireball thing — I gotta say, you're terrifying, but not half as scary as she is."

"No question there," Dresden nodded, proudly. "But it's time for you to go. I'll take care of those kappas for you."

"Thanks. I think."

"Yeah, yeah. Get the hell out of here, archangel sockpuppet," he said, cheerfully. "Yeah, I saw that, too. Breathe a word about this place to anyone and I will find you _and_ your giant nerdy brother and turn you both into archangel sockpuppet gravy."

"Don't even worry about it."

"I _won't_." He put a hand on Dean's shoulder, and with as much gravitas as he could muster, which wasn't much at all, intoned, "May the Force be with you."

He gave the boat a shove, and over the slapping of water against the hull, Dean could hear a half-mad cackle.

When he felt like they were far enough out, Dean killed the engine and sat down.

"Alright," he said to the empty sky. "So what the hell was that?"

In the next breath, Castiel was sitting on the bench seat in the bow of the speedboat, staring out over the water. "For years, the Magi were hunted in droves by people like you, and burned alive in the name of God. I would be suspicious of strangers, as well."

"Suspicious? I was handcuffed and mind-melded, that's straight-up _paranoid."_

"And when you proved you weren't a threat, he swore safe passage and sent you on your way, according to the ancient laws of hospitality."

Dean glared, but said nothing.

"I don't think you grasp what kind of honor that is coming from someone who could have willed you into nonexistence with less mental effort than you use to tie your shoes," Castiel said, eyebrows climbing very humanly.

"Not what I meant," he said, gesturing toward Sam, snoring in the bottom of the boat.

"Sam isn't his usual polite self," the angel returned in a tone that sounded more like he'd said, '_the smartmouthed kid had it_ _coming_.'

"So what was with the mind-melding thing, anyway?"

"Dean. I don't know what that means."

"It means that crazy bastard went poking around in my gray matter just by looking me in the eye."

"Not your brain, your _soul_. Anyone can see a soul. Normal mortals, even, but it's in glimpses over a lifetime. People with the Gift can see souls whole, all at once."

"You can't do that?"

"I have Grace. It's different," Cas said, but didn't expound. He stared out over the water, holding the rail.

The angel was humming a song, and he recognized it after a moment - Zeppelin's _Babe, I'm Gonna Leave You._

"Where'd you hear that?" Dean asked.

"What?"

"That song, where did you hear it?"

"I can hear it right now." The angel frowned at him, even more serious than usual. "You could, too. On the island, couldn't you?"

"I heard something. A guitar." Dean glanced back at the shadowy form of the island, shrinking behind them. "It wasn't Gandalf, was it?"

"All living beings resonate at certain frequencies. Those with the Gift are stronger." Castiel nodded. "One of the Fallen tried to possess him. Sometimes that leaves side effects."

"Tried to possess him? I thought fallen angels turned into humans—"

"_The_ Fallen. One of the originals. A Knight of the Blackened Denarius, who possess the thirty silver coins paid to Judas Iscariot as blood money for the betrayal of Christ."

"Oh," said Dean. "_Shit_. Wait, tried?"

"The wizard apparently showed her the error of her ways."

"Killed her?"

"Converted her. Or the portion of the entity that attempted to possess him, at any rate."

"Converted her to what, the Church of Grumpy Guys in Flasher Coats?"

"To the concept of free will."

"Doesn't explain why I could hear it-" he had barely begun before Cas put a hand on his shoulder.

It was an assault on a sense he didn't know he had; a sucker-punch from sound that was _alive_, something physical, entirely inside his mind yet infinitely distant. A force of its own, like the opposite of gravity, reaching out to echo violently through the vastness of everything_, pulling._

This was a song he thought he knew, no – this was like his first memory of hearing it on staticky F.M. radio when he was ten; it had been so _cold_ out, but Dad had stopped the car for a few minutes on a Minnesota backroad so they could watch the Northern Lights. He could smell the leather seats, burnt dust from the car's heater, taste the sip of coffee laced with bourbon he had swiped when Dad wasn't looking. This was how it was _supposed_ to sound and it would never sound right again; perfected and destroyed in a moment, as pure and crystalline as starlight on water, reverberating off the far end of the universe, off the inside of his skull.

And then he could taste blood in his mouth, felt it drip from a nostril.

"Musical universalis." Castiel pulled his hand away. "The music of the spheres. It's an angelic gift."

Dean scuffed the back of his hand across his upper lip, blood glittered black on his knuckles in the moonlight. He nodded toward the island.

"So that place is a prison, like the Pit."

"No. That place was built by a man."

"What kind of crazy son of a bitch would build that?"

"One of the Magi. Emrys." Castiel's brow creased. "I think it's different in English."

"Merlin," Sam croaked from the bottom of the boat. He sat up, rubbing at his jaw. "Emrys. _Merlin_."

"Oh, this is way above my paygrade," Dean muttered, as he threw the boat into gear again.

* * *

stay tuned...


End file.
